New New Yorkers
Intro to Filmmaking: Writing with Movement
LESSON 3: Sound and Editing
Lesson 3 Summary:
Today’s main questions:
-What is audio?
-How can we tell stories using sound?
-How does editing work?
WHY IS SOUND IMPORTANT:
-Creates an immersive experience, factoring in the directions the sounds are coming from, suggesting what is happening off-screen
-Storytelling, either using a sound bridge to link a cut or link different scenes, indicate the location, or by using musical motifs in the film’s score.
-Emotional response
In film, we can break up the audio into three categories:
-Dialogue
-Music
-Sound Effects
All three of these things can either be Diegetic (coming from within the world of the film) or Non-diegetic (coming from outside the world of the film).
Here are some examples of Diegetic sound:
1. Character dialogue is the clearest example of diegetic sound.
2. Object sounds to make a film more realistic. For example, if a character walks in the snow, the audience should hear the crunching of their footsteps. If a character is standing on a busy street, we hear the natural ambiance of the city.
3. Music emanating from within in the film helps the audience become absorbed in a scene. For example, music playing loudly in someone’s headphones, or the pounding dance music at a bar are also diegetic sound. This kind of diegetic sound is also called “diegetic music” or “source music.”
Examples of non-diegetic sound:
1. The film’s musical score is used to set the film’s tone, manipulate emotions, add drama, express ambiguity, or provide an element of surprise.
2. Sound effects are added for dramatic effect. For example, a record scratch sound added for comic relief is not heard by the characters in the film.
3. Narration or voice-over is used to help explain or reinforce the plot.
Key Terms: New New Yorkers: FILMMAKER’S ALPHABET
Video: Wall-E Animation Foley and Sound Design https://youtu.be/0IPxIvbc_cs
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Walter Murch Interview
https://cinephiliabeyond.org/interview-with-walter-murch/
Walter Murch is an American film editor, director, writer, and sound designer. With a career stretching back to 1969, including work on Apocalypse Now, The Godfather I, II, and III, American Graffiti, and The Talented Mr. Ripley, with three Academy Award wins (from nine nominations: six for picture editing and three for sound mixing). He has been referred to by Roger Ebert as “the most respected film editor and sound designer in the modern cinema.”
Q: In an interesting interview you recently gave to Indiewire, you said that films are called motion pictures, but that they could be easily called emotional pictures since the point of every film should be to cause an emotional response in the audience. Do you think this should be a top priority in any film?
Murch: Yes, with the proviso that it should be the correct emotion. Films are very good at stirring up emotion but you have to be careful about which emotion you’re stirring up. So in a sense, the filmmakers, from the directors to anybody else, have to really say—what emotion are we going for here, and why are we going for it? And how does that emotion relate to what we had in the previous and will have in the following scene? And can we also track not only the emotion but the logic of everything that’s happening, basically is the story understandable? So this dance between intellect and emotion, which is kind of basic to what human beings are, is something that we have to be very careful about. In a film, for instance, you could stage a murder in a very brutal way which would stir up emotions in the audience, but is that going to confuse things later on in the story?
Q: You also talked about over-intentionality in movies, how it’s easy for the audience to feel manipulated into feeling something if things are edited in a certain way. How difficult is it for you not to cross that border, to cause an organic feeling in a viewer rather than a manipulated one?
Murch: It’s very difficult. Because films are evolving under our fingers, so to speak. And we want to communicate certain things and we’re anxious that the audience understands what we’re trying to say. And so many things are uncertain in making of a film that you can sometimes hold on to a scene as being important, but you can learn later that, in fact, by removing that scene in a strange, sometimes mystifying way the whole film relaxes, and the audience gets everything you’re saying even without this very definite moment. I remember many years ago working on a film with Fred Zinnemann called Julia. These arrows began to point at one scene in particular at the beginning of the film. Maybe we should lose this scene because again, there was this over-intentionality to it. And so we, meaning Fred and me, said let’s take it out. So I was undoing the splices, back in the day when we made physical splices, and he observed, you know, when I read the script of this project when I read this scene, I knew that I should do this film. In other words, the very scene he connected with was the scene we are now taking out. So I asked myself, am I removing the heart of the movie? Or am I removing the umbilical cord of the movie? This scene was important to connect Fred with the film, but let’s say, once the nutrients have flowed into the whole film, not only now can you remove the umbilical cord, you have to remove it. We walk around with the belly button, but not with the umbilical cord. So there are scenes like that that deliver their message very particularly, but you should be suspicious of those very scenes and wonder if this film can ride the bike without these training wheels.
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DISCUSS:
When watching a movie or video, do you pay more attention to the sounds or the images? How do you feel about what Murch had to say about stirring up the “right emotion”, or about over-intentionality? How can you tell when audio is used effectively?
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What is film editing?
Film editing is the art and craft of cutting and assembling finished film. This work is done by a film editor who helps complete the director’s vision of the movie. The creative choices of an editor are usually a combination of what they think is best for the film and what the director (and producers) want for the finished project. Mostly done during post-production, aspects of film editing can involve physical strips of celluloid film, digital files, or both.
Early Film Editing: Kuleshov
The Soviet Montage movement emerged in the 1910s and ‘20s, with filmmaker Lev Kuleshov pioneering his famous Kuleshov Experiment.
It involved juxtaposing footage of a man with a bowl of soup, a child in a coffin, and an alluring woman; it would show his unchanging face and cut to one of the three. The idea was, with the power of editing, you could make the audience believe the man had certain feelings towards any one of these scenes.
One of the earliest forms of editing, continuity editing simply ensures that things remain the same from shot to shot. If a person is in the middle of drinking from a cup in one shot, and they’re in the very next shot, they should still be drinking from it, or at least be holding onto it.
Video: Different Kinds of Cuts https://youtu.be/2T42o9LsNm0?t=56
4 Stages of Editing
- Logging: Usually handled by an assistant editor, logging is the process of sorting and organizing the unedited, raw footage (called “dailies”). As the film shoots, directors and cinematographers often mark certain shots as favorites to help guide the video editor once they receive the logged footage.
- First assembly: The first assembly, or assembly cut, is the editor’s first cut of the entire movie. The editor strings together all of the usable footage and organizes it into a chronological sequence that corresponds with the film’s script. For large budget Hollywood features with high-profile production companies, the editor often works on assemblies of individual scenes while the film is still being shot.
- Rough cut: The rough cut may take many months and is usually the first time that the editor works with the film director. The rough cut might involve minor tweaks, or the director may wish to go back to the drawing board and start afresh for parts of the film. The director will often want to reorder, cut, and trim scenes, in addition to swapping in different shot angles and performance takes. Rough cuts only feature simplified placeholder titles, visual effects (if any at all), and sound effects.
- Final cut: Once the film’s director and producers are satisfied with the state of the film, the editor adds the finishing touches. This includes sound effects, music, visual effects, titles, and color grading.
Some Free Audio Editing Software:
- GarageBand
- Audacity
- Ocenaudio
- Acoustica
Some Free Video Editing Software:
- DaVinci Resolve – my personal favorite 🙂
- LightWorks
- Open Shot
- HitFilm Express
- iMovie
REFLECTION:
Through these lessons so far, is there anything you need more clarity around? Anything you are curious about? How has the pacing felt?
If you would like to share anything you have created related to film/video production:
EMAIL ME with a link, PDF, synopsis or text doc: cfischetti@queensmuseum.org
Media Resources:
Video: Wall-E Animation Foley and Sound Design https://youtu.be/0IPxIvbc_cs
Interview with Walter Murch https://cinephiliabeyond.org/interview-with-walter-murch/
Video: Different Kinds of Cuts https://youtu.be/2T42o9LsNm0?t=56